Archive for March 29, 2012

Save Time with Call Screening

March 29, 2012 admin Technology

Your time is valuable. Because of this, there are going to be times when you simply don’t have the time to talk to someone on the phone, or you may just cringe at the thought of talking to some people. By using call screen, you will be able to speak with the people you want to speak with, and politely avoid those you do not. Call screen announces who is calling without you having to speak to anyone. It is a simple tool that will not only free up more of your time, but also help you avoid those pesky calls you dread.

Call screen can be more beneficial than even a secretary. Your secretary won’t always know that you really don’t want to talk to the person on the other end of the line. Most likely, she will just transfer the call and you will be stuck talking. If you have call screen, you will actually hear the name of the caller so that you can avoid those awkward excuses you are scrambling to come up with in order to get off the phone. If call screen announces a name that you don’t want to hear, simply forward the call to voicemail.  You get out of the conversation, and the caller isn’t insulted.

Instead of allowing others to waste your time on unwanted phone calls, use call screen to free up your time for those people you actually want to communicate with. Once you use call screen, you will never want to stop.

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Use Call Transfer and Compete with the Big Businesses

March 28, 2012 admin Tips & Tricks

There are plenty of options that big businesses have at their disposal that set them apart from smaller, independent entrepreneurs. This doesn’t make them better, but wouldn’t it be nice to have even a small sample of those tools at your disposal? Call transfer is one of those options that helps to make an operation of any size run more efficiently and also give it the appearance of a larger operation. 

When you contact a major company by calling customer service, they often use call transfer to move you from one representative to another until you are talking with the individual who can assist you in the most efficient manner. When your customers contact your business, how do you move them to the best person that can help them? If you’re like most small business owners, you give the customer a different phone number and thank them for taking the time to contact you. Or you take their number and have your coworker, partner, employee, or other individual call them back at some point. This doesn’t instill the confidence in the customer that you might wish. 

Now, call transfer, a feature available through iTeleCenter, will help turn your small business into a smooth running operation, allowing you to place the caller on hold, complete with either music or a specific message you design, and then transfer that call to an extension or other phone number altogether. Seamless and professional from beginning to end and that’s why using call transfer is such a potent business idea.

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Send Fax Online and Open Possibilities

March 27, 2012 admin Fax Online

No, the day and age of faxes hasn’t passed and when you can send a fax online, you make yourself, and your business prospects, more formidable. You may wonder what the big deal is about being able to send a fax online. After all, most modern printers have that faxing feature, don’t they? Or you could always head down to your local Staples or Office Max and have them send it for you, right?

Sure. But at what cost? The more that you are required to send a fax to a company, partner, client, financial investor, or other party, the cost can really add up if you choose the latter option. If you have your own printer, you could certainly have access to this option, but only if you have a dedicated phone line as your fax line. Imagine having to plug in and unplug your printer’s telephone line every time you wanted to send a fax. It would become tedious, at best. 

iTeleCenter believes that you deserve a better option. That’s why they offer you the opportunity to send faxes online through their send fax online feature. You can receive faxes from clients, customers, partners, or anyone else through your email. No matter where your busy life takes you during the day, you’re only going to be an email away from pertinent information.  

When you need to send a fax online, simply convert the document into a scanned image (which your printer does when faxing anyway) and send it through the iTeleCenter’s online system. Most of the work we do these days is already digital, such as PDFs and Word documents. There’s no need to print anything out just to send. Simply upload the document, enter the fax number of the recipient, and iTeleCenter will keep trying until the document is successfully faxed, and you will receive confirmation of this.  

When you need to send a fax, the best solution is to do it online.

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How to Use a Virtual Phone System to Your Advantage

March 23, 2012 admin Virtual PBX

Today there are so many different phone plans in existence, it can be difficult to muddle through them all, but for business, a virtual phone system has significant advantages over most other phone plans. In our modern, busy worlds, cell phones are the default option for most individuals. They are not only convenient, but many of these phones allow the users to access the Internet from wherever they are. However, the last thing anyone wants is to rely on the same phone number for their personal lives as well as their business life. 

Keep Your Business Life Separate with a Virtual Phone System 

When you have a virtual phone system from iTeleCenter, for example, not only will you have access to some powerful features, such as call forwarding, messaging, call screening, and even toll free numbers, but you will also be able to effectively separate your personal life from the one that earns you a living.  

With a virtual phone system, it is like having your own personal office phone system regardless of whether you work from out of your home or at a remote location. You can even have calls forwarded to your personal cell phone, and make calls from that phone, without your clients, partners, or customers knowing that personal number. 

We are often caught up in the moment of the Internet age and forget how important phone communication is to business. Customers, while enjoying the convenience of finding products and services online, still wish to be connected to the businesses they frequent, and if they can’t do this in person, they prefer the phone. 

A virtual phone system turns your direct sales, affiliate marketing, or other online business venture into a formidable enterprise and your competition will take notice.

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Put Call Forwarding in Your Back Pocket

March 21, 2012 admin Technology

When you see a call forwarding feature for a phone system, maybe you think to yourself, ‘Big deal.’ Many phone systems have some form of call forwarding. But the iTeleCenter’s call forwarding feature is more powerful than the competition. When you are striving to elevate your business to a new level, then every advantage means good things.

What Makes the iTeleCenter’s Call Forwarding Better?

Call forwarding should be about what it can do for you, not just what it is. When a caller –a prospective customer or existing one- dials your business phone number, with regular call forwarding features from other providers, the number is routed to your cell or house phone and that’s it. You don’t know who’s calling, whether it’s personal or business related, and that can be frustrating. 

Yet with iTeleCenter, you can establish up to three different numbers to have calls forwarded to, be able to see that the call is being forwarded, and even set up different times for different forwarding features. Do you want to have a call forwarded to an employee during overnight hours? Done.  

You can also set up a quick message to play for your callers, such as a welcome message or brief important message before directing them to dial ‘0’ to have their call forwarded to a live person (you). You can establish a positive relationship with your customers even before they hear your friendly, professional voice. 

When you are competing for business, every detail matters to your bottom line. With call forwarding from iTeleCenter, you get one of the most powerful advantages on the market.

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Do You Really Need a Toll Free Number?

March 15, 2012 admin Toll Free & Local Numbers

Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning: a toll free number isn’t quite the dinosaur that people make it out to be. Sure, with modern cell phone plans and their unlimited minutes, who really worries about how much a long distance call might be? So why bother with the added expense of a toll free number? 

If you take your business seriously, then the investment is well worth the effort. No one is going to argue that the cost of making phone calls is much different than it was, let’s say, twenty years ago. Back then you had to pay attention to every long distance call. Every minute was another dime added to your bill. That’s why a toll free number was so vital to a business’s success. 

Yet today the toll free number means more than it ever has, yet too many small business owners simply fail to grasp its power and potential. This isn’t the ‘dark side of the force.’ It’s not about luring naïve business owners into the grasp of the toll free number. Today it’s all about marketing. 

That’s right. Marketing. If you have a business, you know full well how great the challenges are in attracting new customers. Thanks to the Internet, you are exposed to millions of new potential prospects, but you are also facing more competition. Those little toll free numbers that you think are no longer relevant built their own reputation through the years. So what if your customers have unlimited minutes and can set the phone down for hours at a time and not worry about the cost. That doesn’t matter. 

What matters is that when they see a toll free number, they immediately (albeit possibly subconsciously) think that your business is more professional more polished, and more ready to serve their needs. That is perhaps the best reason to have a toll free number for your business.

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Place a Click to Call Button on your Website

March 9, 2012 admin Click to Call

Have you ever visited a website, gotten excited about the product or opportunity while on the site, written down a contact number and then completely forgotten about it once you close your browser? This happens regularly to thousands of website visitors.

Now imagine this… You’re on a website, something attracts your interest and you see a click to call button right there on the site while you are actively engaged in the site’s presentation. You click the button, enter your phone number and about 8 seconds later your phone rings! You are instantly connected to a website representative who can answer all of your questions while you are still on their site! Sounds great if you’re the site visitor, right?

Now turn that around and imagine the click to call button is on YOUR company’s website. Now you get the benefit of being able to speak to any site visitor that decides to click that button and learn more about your products or opportunity. It’s all done via your iTeleCenter number. Whatever call forwarding settings you have on your account will be followed for these calls as well. Someone visits your site, engages the click to call button, enters their number, and the call connects you right to them. You are now speaking to someone actively engaged on your website. Couldn’t be easier.

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Save money and help the environment – send fax online

March 6, 2012 admin Fax Online

Stop wasting paper, electricity, ink or toner! You don’t need to use a fax machine to send or receive faxes.

iTeleCenter’s send fax online feature allows you to do just that – send faxes online. You can send any Word document, Excel spreadsheet, PDF, TIFF or simple text file right from your computer. And since you’re using your included minutes, there is no extra long distance dialing cost. No need to print the document and send it through a fax machine.

You can also receive faxes online. Just give your iTeleCenter number to the person faxing you. You’ll receive the fax in your back office. You can save it to your computer if it is something you need to keep longer than your messages and faxes are stored online. Only print it if you must have a hard copy.

Using these features will save you money and help the environment.

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What to Look for When Choosing a Virtual Phone System

March 1, 2012 admin Virtual PBX

Scour the Internet for any length of time and you’ll find that for every single product or service offer available, there are about tens to hundreds of others, and they all seem to be so much alike it can be difficult to set one apart from the others. Okay, so how do you go about choosing a virtual phone system? First, you need to know about the important features to look for and understand that few offer all of them to you. In many cases, they hook you on the idea of a virtual phone system and reel you in with some basic features. Then, once you’re in the boat, so to speak, that’s when reality sinks in and you discover that the features that actually matter most to you are … ahem, extras. 

That’s not the case with iTeleCenter, though. That’s why you should know the basic features and work from there. Okay, so a virtual phone system is designed to help your business grow. It should have the option for you to choose your phone number. How about a vanity phone number that makes it easy for potential customers to remember? You should also be able to choose a local number, if that’s your preference. 

What else? Well, how about having access to what we tend to consider the basics of phone service these days? Call forwarding, call waiting, call transfer, screening and announcing, a ‘do-not-disturb’ feature, and more. And, of course, the most important feature of the virtual phone system, which is to have calls coming in directed (forwarded) to other phone numbers. Your callers would enter an extension number and then the call would be forwarded to a landline, cell phone, or other type of phone system that you already have in place. 

 Choosing a virtual phone system is an important business decision and certainly one that you should take seriously. It’s important to do your due diligence and research to make sure that you select the best system that’s right for your business and its needs. You should also expect professionalism at every step of the process, including the ability to record greetings, manage multiple mailboxes, and have the ability to send and receive faxes online – no need for a fax machine. Our modern business climate is changing fast. When you keep up with those changes, you stay ahead of the other 90% of your competition that are lagging behind. With iTeleCenter, you get the best of the best.

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